by Diana Castle
“Really, Inspector. To suggest that I, a mere woman, was capable of confounding a courtroom full of such learned and erudite men.” She smiled and shook her head. “No, I was found innocent because I am innocent.”
“I refuse to believe that. My investigation was quite thorough.”
“Indeed it was. You questioned not only the servants and all of my late husband’s friends and relatives but also my friends, relatives and just about everyone I have ever known or had contact with in my life.”
“It was crucial to my investigation to compile as complete a dossier regarding the accused as I could.”
The accused. He meant her.
“In order to establish motive?” she asked.
His dark brow lifted. “Among other things.”
She ticked off on her fingers. “Motive, means and opportunity. Is that not the criteria used to establish whether someone has committed murder?”
“Yes, Lady Fairchild. Among other things. You possessed all three.”
“As you stated in court. According to you my motive for murdering my husband was greed. My opportunity to kill him was the fact I was with him the night he died and my means was—”
“Poison. As I indicated in my testimony.”
“Which, of course, neither you nor anyone else found any evidence of.”
“You obviously used some kind of rare or unknown poison.”
She laughed. “Rare or unknown? Come now, Inspector. Although you were successful in influencing the grand jury to indict me on such insubstantial evidence, it was brought out in court that my husband died while having intimate relations with me.”
He nodded, but she noted a distinct tightening along his jaw line. Was it her reference to her intimate relations with her late husband that had brought about the reaction?
“That was your version of the events,” he said.
“A version, mind you, that was supported by Edmund’s physician. My husband was not only an elderly man he had a weak heart.”
Inspector Maxwell’s dark eyes sharpened. “But there was one other infirmity your husband possessed that both you and the good doctor neglected to mention in court. Lord Fairchild was impotent and incapable of having sexual intercourse with you. Therefore, he did not die as you said he did. Engaged in coitus with you.”
Rowena blinked in surprise. “How did you find that out? Dr. Meriwether would not have told you.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s true.” Inspector Maxwell took a step towards her. “You killed your husband, Lady Fairchild. Why will you not admit it?”
She laughed, but there was a raw edge to her laughter. “Is that why you came here? In the hope I would confess to something I didn’t do in order to ease your own guilty conscience?”
Now it was his turn to look surprised. “My guilty conscience? What do you mean?”
“It is not my husband, the manner of his death or whether or not I was responsible for it that has you so obsessed.” She moved close enough to him that she was certain he could smell her perfume. “It's me.”
His nostrils quivered as he scented her. “What? Are you mad?”
She gazed up into his dark eyes. “You want to see me brought to justice. But it’s not by the law or through the courts that you want to see me punished.” She lifted her face until her mouth was just inches from his. “You want to punish me. Don’t you?”
His face remained impassive, but his throat worked convulsively.
She knew she was taking a risk being so frank with him. But, blast it all, he was sorely testing her patience. She could not help but admire his intelligence, as it was quite formidable, but she had assumed he possessed what she liked to think of as common sense.
“You’re clouding the issue, Lady Fairchild.”
“Really? And just what issue am I clouding?”
“Your guilt, of course,” he said flatly. “You hope to distract me with your feminine nonsense.”
Her jaw stiffened. Feminine nonsense indeed! How many times had her own husband, whom she had loved dearly, tossed those very words out at her whenever she’d done or said something he’d been unable to understand.
She sighed heavily. “How many more times must we go over that, Inspector? I was found innocent of the charge you brought against me.”
“We will go over it as many times as it takes for you to admit your culpability in the matter.”
“I won’t do that.”
Inspector Maxwell put his hands behind his back, which served to emphasize the broadness of his shoulders and the slimness of his waist. “Your husband was incapable of having sexual intercourse with you. Therefore, he could not have died in the manner you testified to in court.”
A lump formed in Rowena’s throat. Edmund had been so upset when he found out from his physician that there was nothing that could be done regarding his inability to have an erection. He’d been a proud man and, she suspected, fearful that his very young wife would find someone else to satisfy her needs. But from the day they were married until the day he died, she had remained faithful to him.
“My husband was embarrassed regarding his inability to achieve an erection,” she replied “And if you recall, I did not say he died while having sexual intercourse with me. I said he died as a result of heart failure due to an act of intimacy between us.” Rowena bit her lip. “Although, I must admit, I do feel some responsibility for what happened.”
The inspector moved close enough that the wool of his jacket brushed against the silk of her dressing gown. His eyes were fiercely alert, his nostrils flared and he brought to mind her late husband’s hounds once they’d caught the scent of a fox.
“What do you mean you feel some responsibility?”
Rowena gazed up at him from under her lashes. “My husband was not a healthy man.”
Maxwell nodded. “He was seventy years old. Forty-four years your senior and certainly not physically capable of keeping a wife as young as you sexually satisfied. Especially in light of his impotency.”
“That is true. But he was far kinder and more generous than any man I have ever met.”
A smirk creased the inspector’s lips. “Of that I have no doubt. Especially regarding the generous part. He was, after all, very wealthy.”
Rowena refused to acknowledge and therefore give credence to his theory that she had not been content with the gifts and luxuries, the manor and title, Lord Fairchild had showered upon his young wife. That she had, in fact, murdered her husband because she had become greedy and wanted it all.
“It's true my husband was not a vigorous man and that he had lost the ability to satisfy me in the ways deemed suitable for a man and woman. But we had found other ways to give each other pleasure.”
Inspector Maxwell's upper lip curled and, at first, Rowena thought it was with scorn. But upon closer inspection, she saw it was trembling. He stared down at her, his dark-lashed eyes boring into hers.
“My husband and I,” she went on, her voice just above a whisper, “engaged in certain types of activities that pleased us both.”
“What activities, Lady Fairchild? For you certainly did not bring them up in court.”
He was so close to her that she could smell and nearly taste the scotch mints on his breath.
“No, I did not. I was thinking of my husband’s reputation.”
She hesitated, wanting to draw out this erotic pas de deux between her and the inspector for as long as possible.
His face tightened. “Go on. What did Lord Fairchild do to you?”
Rowena lowered her head and released a heavy sigh. “He liked to tie me up and whip me.”
She waited two hard beats of her heart then looked up at the inspector.
He only stared down at her, but a muscle along his jaw clenched.
“Continue,” he said, but his voice was now low and husky instead of the clipped and short tone he’d been using earlier.
“Unfortunately, that proved too strenuous for him.�
�� She cleared her throat. “So he took to spanking me instead.” She licked her lower lip. “Especially when I’d been naughty.” She smiled at the recollection.
Inspector Maxwell glared down at her but she noted his breath had quickened.
“He would place me over his knee, pull down my undergarments and spank me on my bare bottom. He would do it until I had spent myself. The night he died...he overexerted himself and suffered a heart seizure.”
Rowena lowered her eyes. “I blame myself. He’d had a difficult day and I should have insisted he rest that night.”
“I find it hard to believe that a man like Lord Fairchild would be involved in such perversions.”
She lifted her eyes. “What? Why? Because you and others saw him as the embodiment of the perfect gentleman?”
“Exactly.”
“Please tell me you’re not that naive.”
Inspector Maxwell frowned. “I am not. I am well acquainted with what goes on in establishments owned by the likes of Eliza Barrett, for example.”
“Acquainted with her, are you?”
Eliza Barrett owned a couple of brothels in London that catered to prominent businessmen, politicians and even the occasional aristocrat. Her specialty lay in fulfilling her clients’ desire for flagellation. She had even designed rooms for them to indulge in sado-masochistic activities.
Revulsion twisted the inspector’s handsome face. “The woman is a fiend and should burn in hell.”
“I do not disagree with you on that, Inspector.”
Eliza’s alleged practice of drugging women and abducting children to force them into prostitution were, in Rowena’s eyes, the epitome of evil. As a child growing up poor and parentless on the streets of London, she’d barely escaped being kidnapped and forced to work in such houses herself. Lord Fairchild had once admitted to her that, before they were married, he had paid a visit to one of Eliza’s brothels. But even he had not been able to stomach what had gone on there and had not returned.
“No, Lady Fairchild, I am not acquainted in the way you are insinuating with Eliza Barrett or her ilk. But for you to stand there and state that a man of Lord Fairchild’s reputation would indulge in such depravity in his own home? I refuse to believe it.”
“Depravity? Is that what you think Edmund and I did?”
“Yes.”
“And you have never indulged in such depravity yourself?”
Inspector Maxwell stared witheringly down at her.
“Or, perhaps,” Rowena went on, her voice shaking with both anger and excitement, “you have dreamed of doing such things? To me perhaps?”
He grabbed her arms and shook her. “You brazen hussy! How dare you!”
Rowena’s cunt tightened and inwardly she smiled. He was so close to the edge.
“Are you an honest man, Inspector?”
He tightened his hands about her arms, his eyes blazing. “What do you mean?”
“Are you honest?”
“As much as one can be in such a corrupt world.”
“Then be honest and admit you have such desires regarding me.”
He released her arms. “You are obsessed with yourself, Lady Fairchild, as I have discovered many in your former vocation to be.”
Rowena nodded. “Theater people can be quite narcissistic but we are also students of human nature. The fact that you chose this time of the day to call on me suggests you hoped to find me thus attired. And I suspect you also knew I would invite you up to my bedroom.”
He shook his head. “I am here because I am an officer of the law who was forced to bear witness to a travesty of justice. You murdered your husband, Lady Fairchild. I know it and so do you. Truth and justice. Those are my only concerns regarding you.”
“Are you willing to test that?”
He only stared at her.
Rowena stepped away from him and walked over to her claret-colored ottoman. Once there she kept her back to Inspector Maxwell. She took off her dressing gown and let it fall to the floor. Underneath it, she wore only her corset as it was the only piece of undergarment Mary had managed to help her on with before Inspector Maxwell had come calling. Her bottom was bare as were her legs. She hadn’t even had time to put on her garter or stockings. Her hair spilled down her back, the ends of it just brushing the upper curve of her buttocks. When her husband was alive, just presenting herself to him in this manner had kindled his desire.
Delilah. Salome. Lilith.
He would whisper those names in her ear when he finally put his hands on her.
Inspector Maxwell, however, was nothing like her husband, who had embraced the pleasures of the flesh as eagerly and enthusiastically as he had embraced life. However, there was no doubt in Rowena’s mind that the inspector wanted her.
She’d been aware of his desire for her that first day she met him. Even when his sole purpose had been to see her swing from the end of a noose, she had felt his lust for her. Lust he had been unable to acknowledge thus leading him to channel it into his ruthless persecution of her.
But she had not been found guilty, had not swung from a rope, and his hellish appetite for her had not been sated.
And now, here she was, offering to him the very thing he reviled yet desired beyond all reason.
Rowena smiled. How utterly delicious. The skin on her bare buttocks tingled as she waited for Inspector Maxwell’s response. But he did not move from where she’d left him when she walked over to the ottoman. She felt his eyes on her. Like lashes from a whip across her naked skin. She stood there, trying not to shiver, trying not to let him know she was starting to feel anxious.
She heard movement. Shoes moving across the carpet. However, she could not tell if he was coming towards her or leaving. Fearing she may have miscalculated him, she waited breathlessly for the door to open and close behind him. Instead, she felt the stirring of air that meant someone had moved up behind her.
Her heart pounded.
He put his hand on her bottom.
Rowena almost climaxed right then and there. Her mouth opened and she drew in a hard, sharp breath.
The inspector slowly moved his hand over the curve of her ass, his fingers lightly trailing across her skin. She had not realized that merely the anticipation of his touch could heighten the pleasure so.
His long fingers moved along the crevice of her buttocks then down, down to her quim. He fondled the wet hairs and lips of her cunt, the wool of his coat and trousers scratching her bare ass. His breath moved heatedly against her neck, then over to her ear.
“Tell me, Lady Fairchild.”
He pushed his fingers deep inside her.
She gripped the back of the ottoman, her body shuddering. “What?”
“Tell me what really happened with your husband.” He slowly moved his fingers in and out of her cunt.
“I told you.” Rowena threw her head back, her hips rocking wantonly against his hand. “I didn’t kill him. But not a day has gone by I wished I’d insisted he’d gone to bed instead of...” She groaned when the inspector’s fingers pushed hard against a particularly sensitive part of her cunt. “Instead of indulging in the perversions you knew would kill him.”
She wildly shook her head. “No, no, that’s not true. I didn’t know...Oh, God...I didn’t know. I swear. I loved my husband. With all my heart. He was kind to me when so many were not.”
Maxwell pressed his body tightly against hers. His fingers were now determinedly fucking her and she heard and felt his labored breath.
She was close to her climax but this wasn’t how she wanted to experience it. And in her heart, she knew it wasn’t what the inspector wanted either, pleasurable as it was proving to be.
“You think I'm guilty.” Her body shuddered as his fingers in her cunt drove her nearer and nearer to orgasm. “Nothing I say convinces you otherwise. Punish me then,” she begged. “Punish me.”
Maxwell jerked his hand out of her cunt. Grabbing her arm, he sat on the ottoman and pulled her across his lap.
Rowena pressed her cheek against the ottoman. Her cunt throbbed from the closeness of her climax.
“You are guilty, Lady Fairchild.”
“Yes, I am,” she whispered. “I am guilty.”
“Say it!” he demanded.
“I am guilty of loving my husband so much that I could not say no to him.”
She waited. Nothing happened.
“Go ahead, Inspector. It’s all right.”
“I want to hurt you, yes. Very much so. But I also don’t want to.”
Rowena was surprised. It was the first time since she’d met him that he’d ever expressed any concern regarding her welfare.
She turned her head and looked up into his eyes. “Don’t worry. I can take whatever you choose to inflict on me.”
He slowly rubbed his hand over her rear, his smooth palm pressing hard against her flesh.
Rowena heard his heavy breathing, felt the tightening of his leg muscles beneath his trousers. She moved her body along his thighs, like a cat rubbing against its master. Then she turned her head and pressed her cheek back against the ottoman.
The inspector’s hand descended upon her ass with the coppery strike of a hammer against an anvil.
Pain exploded through Rowena’s body. She closed her eyes, tears stinging the lids. The fire along her rear burned then dissipated until it was a dull throb. She waited for the next blow.
“Inspector?”
His hand descended again.
Rowena yelped, her bottom wriggling under his hands.
He pressed his lips against her ear. “Do not speak until I give permission. Do you understand?”
Rowena nodded, her heart pounding.
He struck her again, his hand leaping from cheek to cheek, the flesh burning under the assault, the pain drilling straight into her cunt. She jerked against his thighs, her lips quivering against the nubbed fabric of the ottoman.
“Oh, God!”
Maxwell stopped. “Did you say something, Lady Fairchild?”
“No, Inspector. I didn’t—”
His palm slammed onto her rear.
“No, sir! Oh, no.”
The pain was now so intense Rowena’s instinct was to get away but, even as the pain slurred through her body, her cunt was aching with her need to climax.